Segments: how a text is counted
A carrier delivers a long text as a series of pieces called segments. The recipient still sees one message, but each segment counts toward your text usage. How many characters fit in a segment depends on what the message contains:
For example, a 300-character message in standard characters is 2 segments. The same message with a single emoji in it is 5 segments.
Why one emoji changes the count
If a message includes even one character outside the standard text character set, such as an emoji, a curly (“smart”) quote pasted from a word processor, or a letter from a non-Latin alphabet, the entire message switches to the Unicode format. Unicode segments are shorter (70 and 67 characters), so the message uses more segments. The composer shows Unicode next to the counter when this happens.Characters that count as two
A few standard-set symbols count as two characters each:^, {, }, \, [, ], ~, |, and the euro sign (€). A message with many of these reaches the segment limit sooner than its visible length suggests.
How links are counted
When a text is sent, every link in it is replaced with a WeGive short link of a fixed length, so a long web address does not make your message longer. The character counter in the composer takes this into account and counts each link at the short-link length. Two kinds of links are not shortened and count at their full length: links hosted on Amazon S3 file storage, and a bare# link.
The 1,600-character limit and long messages
A single text can be at most 1,600 characters (emoji count as two toward this limit). If a message goes over after any personalization, such as supporter names or other merge fields, is filled in, WeGive does not reject it. It sends the message as several consecutive texts, splitting at the spaces between words so that no word or link is cut in half. The split texts are not numbered. Because personalized values are filled in at send time, a message that looks short in the editor can still end up longer for a supporter with long values in their merge fields.Reading the character counter
In the message composer the counter shows the number of characters and segments for your message, for example 160 characters / 1 segment.- When the message uses Unicode, Unicode appears next to the counter.
- In a one-on-one conversation, a message over 1,600 characters also shows sends as N texts.
- When creating a message, a warning with the segment count appears once a message goes beyond one segment.